Irish Eyes
up close
Actor Aidan Quinn stares down a golf ball
with the same intensity he brings to his varied film roles
BY GREG MIDLAND
PHOTOGRAPHY BY JEFF WEINER
Even when he’s talking about golf—or perhaps, especially when he’s talk- ing about golf—Aidan Quinn’s legendary blue eyes light up, and he sounds as poetic as some of the characters he has played in more than three decades on stage and screen.
“Delusions of grandeur,” he says when
asked what attracts him to the game. “It’s the
ability on some days, with some shots, to feel
like a god. To have some finite goal that can
occasionally be reached with artistry and flop
shots and good bounces, and then on the bad
days, well…” He pauses, contemplating how
to put it. “It’s the drama that is as intensely
bad as it can be good.”
Drama is the fabric of Aidan Quinn’s pro-
fessional life. He has appeared in more than
50 movies, including Desperately Seeking Susan,
Benny & Joon, Blink, Legends of the Fall,
Michael Collins, and dozens of smaller films
that, he remarks with a laugh, “win awards in
other parts of the world but very few people
see in America.”
Quinn was born on March 8, 1959, in
Chicago, though he is nearly as much Irish as
American. “Our house had that wonderful,
crazy energy that goes on with a big Irish
family,” he recalls with a smile. Aidan and his
siblings—he is the second of five children—
were firmly connected to the homeland by
their parents, particularly their father, a
teacher. On two separate occasions, Michael
Quinn took sabbaticals to further his Ph.D
studies in Irish literature, and moved the
entire family back and forth between Illinois
and Ireland.
“My dad was obsessed with an Irish education,” says Quinn. “My older brother and
younger sister actually did all their secondary
schooling in Ireland, and I did about half of
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